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Monday, June 03, 2013

Despite the party's focus on trumped up -- and dissipating -- "scandals,"
there is still some attention being given to the big Republican
rebranding project. It's easy to see how the controversies became the
shiny bauble; there was a lot of resistance to rebranding, mostly
because it looked a lot like the party would have to abandon core
beliefs that were extremely with the voting public. Despite assurances
that no, no, no they would only have to speak differently, not
legislate differently, many felt this was still going too far. Sure,
Todd Akin's rape theorizing hurt the party, they reasoned, but he was
right. Or at least, on the right track. And you don't fight the evils of
abortion and gay marriage and illegal immigration by never talking
about them. Editing party members' speech is censorship and censorship is -- for all
intents and purposes -- taking these issues off the table. With scandals, you create reasons to vote against someone, not for you. As a result, you have to change nothing.

And to a
certain extent, those skeptics of rebranding are right. You can't
legislate against things without ever talking about them. The GOP will need to do more than rebrand
-- they'll have to change some policies and give up some lost and
losing battles. These people, who make up a big chunk of the party, will
have to take the furthest back burners and simmer there forgotten --
probably forever. They don't like that idea, so they resist rebranding.
Which also explains why the rebranderscall it rebranding. They don't want to lose the nutjobs, because they still need them to turn out. They want their votes, they just want them to shut up about their ideas.

But
when you look at the party's problems with different demographics, you
see that it's not just the hate-filled social conservatives that are the
problem. The problem is everything.

Politico:
A new postmortem on the November elections from the nation’s leading
voice for college Republicans offers a searing indictment of the GOP
“brand” and the major challenges the party faces in wooing young voters,
according to a copy given exclusively to POLITICO.

The College
Republican National Committee on Monday will make public a detailed
report — the result of extensive polling and focus groups — dissecting
what went wrong for Republicans with young voters in the 2012 elections
and how the party can improve its showing with that key demographic in
the future.

It’s not a pretty picture. In fact, it’s a “dismal present situation,” the report says.

↓ CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP ↓

The
problem that Republicans face in winning over young voters is that
those voters aren't buying GOP spin. They see Republican policies as
they plainly are, not as they're presented by the party. So the problem
isn't rebranding -- a lot of these issues have already been "rebranded"
by spin and propaganda. The problem is that these voters aren't chumps. ThinkProgress' Igor Volsky took a look
at the College Republican's report and came away with some key
takeaways, including "Climate change is real," "Expand universal health
care coverage," and "End the attacks on women’s reproductive health."

But
it's in economic issues that the party really takes a beating. Younger
voters are not buying their BS. They blame Republicans for the crash and
recession, believe that lowering taxes doesn't create jobs, want the
wealthy to pay their fair share, want to cut defense spending, say that
Bush's wars blew up the deficit, and trust Democrats more on dealing
with student loans. And again, almost all of these issues have already
been rebranded (i.e., spun), so rebranding isn't the problem here. The
core Republican policies are the problem. These voters aren't buying the
excuses, they're clear-eyed about the reality.

And it's not that
young voters like high taxes and overly strict regulations, they're just
not falling for the way the GOP uses these issues as scapegoats to push
other agendas. "Policies that lower taxes and regulations on small
businesses are quite popular," the report says. "Yet our focus on
taxation and business issues has left many young voters thinking they
will only reap the benefits of Republican policies if they become
wealthy or rise to the top of a big business. We’ve become the party
that will pat you on your back when you make it but won’t offer you a
hand to help you get there."

In other words, they aren't hearing
what Republicans say, they're watching what Republicans do. When all
Republican economic policies boil down to a massive giveaway to the
wealthy, when the preferred tax structure is a transfer of wealth from
the bottom up, when Sen. Joe Barton apologizes to BP for getting our Gulf of Mexico in their oil, it's pretty clear you're dealing with people who serve only the top income earners.

And
so I think this report may mark the beginning of the end for the big
GOP rebranding effort. When the "serious" fiscal and economic
conservatives could blame the social conservative nutbags for their problems, that was one thing. When the economic nutbags
are also responsible, that's quite another thing entirely. If the GOP
were to fix both problems, what would be left? They'd have to go back to
Eisenhower -- who I'm pretty sure most modern Republicans would call a
communist. There is no scapegoat to drive out of the village carrying
the parties sins -- the whole village is awash in those sins. The only
way to win over new voters is to stop standing for what has come define
modern conservatives -- Reaganaut "trickle-down" BS and social politics of hatred and exclusion.

When
the answer to the question, "How do Republicans attract new voters?"
becomes, "Stop being Republicans," both the question and answer will be
ignored. At its core the question really is, "How do we survive?"